


Got Your Back

by FoxGlade



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Disability, Family Feels, Gen, Protective Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 15:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16140452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: Growing up after the turn of the millennia is a strange duality, for Donnie and his brothers. In some ways, they're just normal kids - Raph has been part of a knitting forum for years, Leo writes Star Trek fanfic, Mikey does speed paint videos for his own YouTube channel. And the less said about Donnie’s Twitter habits, the better.But for Donnie, the real challenge is realising that even among his brothers, there are things that make him not normal.





	Got Your Back

**Author's Note:**

> cant believe rottmnt invented brotherly love and genuine caring and animation and also the concept of teenage mutant ninja turtles. i'd die for this show thanks.
> 
> wrote this while sick, which is only relevant bc my housemate came home and said "oh you're in stage six then". thanks shena, this one is for u.
> 
> this story contains references to donnie being disabled and using his battle shell as a disability aid. i am not disabled, and if i have misstepped, sincere apologies. comments and critiques are always welcomed.

 

Growing up after the turn of the millennia is a strange duality, for Donnie and his brothers. They know they’re not normal, they have a front row seat with their scavenged televisions and stolen wifi and covert missions to the sewer grate with the best view of Times Square showing them how normal people are supposed to look. But they _are_ normal, in a lot of ways. Raph has been part of a knitting forum for years; they’re gonna make him a mod soon, with how gentle and encouraging he is to newcomers. Leo’s been obsessed with Star Trek since he was a baby and their dad would put late night _Voyager_ re-runs on to sooth them to sleep, and basically learned to read via epic chapterfics on LiveJournal. Mikey is subscribed to a dozen art blogs and does speed paint videos for his own YouTube channel. And the less said about Donnie’s Twitter habits, the better.

So if human kids their age have their normalcy defined by their internet and pop culture habits, then the turtles are as normal as anyone. But for everything else?

 

 

“Raph, do the thing,” Mikey says, flat on his back, before he pulls his limbs and head into his shell with a comical _pop!_ Raph hovers. They’re just kids; Dad pretends like he doesn’t remember their ages, but on their birthday this year he’d moaned about Leo and Donnie entering their Terrible Fives, which are somehow different from the Terrible Fours of last year, and the Terrible Threes of the year before that.

“You’re gonna get dizzy!” Raph complains. He’s older than the rest of them, and bigger by a long shot, wider than Leo and Donnie’s skinny frames and towering over Mikey, who’s still baby-sized.

“It’ll be fine!” Mikey replies, muffled with a weird echo. “If you don’t I’m gonna go sliding in the pipes without you!”

Donnie, lying on his stomach and not looking up from the flip phone he’d found in one of the tunnels, says, “Do that, Mikey, I wanna video it.”

“No!” Raph yelps. Leo starts to reach out to touch Mikey, but Raph slaps his hand away and gives him a rap on the shell. “Stop, you’re gonna do it too fast - fine, I’m gonna do it. Just, tell me if you’re dizzy, okay? Or if your shell hurts, or-”

“It’ll be fine!” Mikey repeats. It’s one of his favourite phrases, said before every cooking experiment, every venture away from their dad’s not-so-watchful eye, and every time he helped Donnie sneak one of Dad’s televisions away to steal the wiring out of it to make a homemade rocket launcher. Which was really just the one time, but it was a very memorable and ultimately incorrect use of the phrase.

Raph steels himself and rests a single finger on a corner of Mikey’s shell, then pushes gently. Mikey starts to spin. He makes a joyous noise, and Raph, encouraged, spins him again, faster and faster, smile growing every time Mikey shrieks louder and louder.

“I wanna do it!” Leo complains. He lies down next to Mikey, trying to pull his limbs in with little success. Mikey laughs, head popping out of his shell.

“You can’t!” he says gleefully. “It’s my trick! You’re the red face turtle, and I’m the pull in turtle!”

“Red-eared slider,” Donnie corrects, looking up finally. “And you’re a box turtle, Mikey.”

“I’m not a box,” Mikey scoffs. He finally spins to a halt and stretches out again, rolling to sit up with his legs splayed out. “I’m a _funky_ turtle.”

“Where did you even learn that word?” Donnie asks. Mikey just beams and starts rocking back and forth. “Never mind. Isn’t it nap time for you anyway?”

“I’m not tired, Dee,” he wines, but Raph is already picking him up.

“Kids gotta take naps every day,” Raph says, the way he says things that are Clearly Very Important So Everyone Better Listen. “Dad said so. And Donnie Googled it and Google said it was true.”

“I’ll make sure he stays down!” Leo volunteers, and leaps onto Raph’s shoulders. Which is fine, he can usually carry at least one of them at a time, but Mikey is squirming and Raph loses his balance when Leo lands on his shoulders, so he stumbles back and falls. Right onto Donnie’s shell.

And hey, they may live in a sewer, but Donnie’s had a fairly charmed life, all things considered. He’s five years old with no real experience with pain beyond a scraped knee and a bump on the head, and here he is suddenly with about forty pounds of spiky turtle crushing his very sensitive, very soft shell.

So he screams, and then bursts into tears.

“Shit!” Raph says, caught between scrambling to his feet and making sure none of his spikes are stuck. There’s a stab of pain as he pulls away, but in another second Raph is crouched in front of Donnie, holding his face and saying frantically, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

Donnie takes a shuddering breath. “Y-y-you swore,” he says, and then gasps and lets out another wail. Mikey, peering over Raph’s shoulder, wails as well, and that just sets Raph off, and by the time Leo brings their dad in, all three of them are sobbing.

“You must be more careful,” Dad says, much later, after Mikey’s been put down to nap, exhausted from the drama of it all, and Raph and Leo have been distracted by a Jupiter Jim movie. He puts another bandaid on Donnie’s shell - Atomic Lass, his absolute favourite, hoarded away for the really bad scrapes - and rubs the nape of Donnie’s neck. “Your shell is not like your brothers’. There are times when you cannot roughhouse with them like you may want to, or join them on adventures.”

“I don’t wanna get left behind,” Donnie mumbles. Dad pats his shoulder and moves to get another bandaid.

“Life is hard,” Dad says bluntly. Donnie droops. “But,” Dad adds, “it is better with brothers like yours. They can protect you.”

Between getting left behind by his brothers or having them treating him like a baby, Donnie can’t really decide which is worse. But the way Dad phrases it does give him an idea...

“Okay,” he says, because that usually gets Dad to leave him alone, but Dad just gives him the I Know You’re Up To Something, Purple look. Donnie gives his best Who, Me? I’m Just Going To Go Back To My Room And Maybe Draw Eyebrows On My Face look in return.

“Be careful,” Dad repeats. His smoothes the last bandaid down and stands. “Stay in the lair, no sewer tunnels or you will get infected. I’ll find some new sand so you can have a bath when the bandaids come off.”

“Thank you, Papa,” Donnie says sweetly, his glum but obedient expression firmly in place. Dad gives one last _hmph_ and heads back to the TV room.

Leo and Raph are probably in the bedroom, but that’s okay, because Donnie has sketch paper and crayons stashed all over the lair, in case of sudden inspiration, or if needs an emergency Mikey distraction. Keeping his back are still as possible, he hurries to the nearest sofa cushion and unzips it, then shakes it until half the stuffing comes out, along with three crumpled sheets of paper and a single purple crayon. Donnie grins and gets to work.

 

 

So what does one do when they find out that, even among others who aren’t normal, they’re deemed even less normal? Well, popular media would suggest getting a makeover montage that somehow makes you better than everyone else by way of achieving modern artificial beauty standards and gaining the attention of the most popular boy in school, but that’s Plan G for now. Plan A is a lot easier, really; cover up your differences with awesome technological advancements and a heavy helping of snark. Genius. And it even comes with a building montage, so hey, that’s a plus.

 

 

“Okay kids, pizza’s up,” April yells from the kitchen. Mikey and Leo cheer, abandoning their Xbox controllers immediately, paying no heed to the crashes onscreen as their characters veer off the road. Raph carefully gathers his cross stitching and places it on an end table, next to a lamp shaped like a cat and no less than three empty tubes of lipstick, before also running to get dinner.

Donnie continues his work. He’s ten years old, not an animal. He’ll go and get food when he’s done, even if it takes all night.

“Donnie?” April calls. He keeps typing. “I got you Extreme Veggie Supreme with extra mushrooms olives and capers!”

Now that he thinks about it, this can totally wait. “Coming!” he yells back, shoving his laptop to the other end of the couch and running for the door.

His brothers are all perched on the mismatched bar stools at the kitchen counter, munching on their pizza slices while April puts the box up on top of the fridge. Clearly she’d learned from the last time they were over. “Yours is on the bench, Donnie, get it while it’s hot!”

The bench is out of his reach - usually April will hand his plate to him, of he’d scramble up via a stool, but his brothers have beaten him to it. Luckily, this gives him the perfect opportunity to test out his newest Shell Innovation. He reaches to his side for the little remote control hooked onto the shell, and with a dramatic flourish that no one appreciates because they aren’t _looking at him_ , he presses the single button on it.

Just as planned, little flaps pop out of the shell’s upper corners, folding out into basic propulsion engines that kick into gear as he laughs in delight. That, at last, draws his brothers’ attention.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash!” Raph yelps as Donnie’s feet leave the ground. He slides to the ground, pizza abandoned, and rushes to his side. “What’re you doing?!”

“He’s achieved the power of flight!” Mikey says in awe. “Good for you, bro!”

“Oh, there’s no way this can go wrong,” Leo says, just as April finally turns to see the scene.

“No way,” she says, and then, “No _way_ is this happening in my Dad’s kitchen!”

“Aw, April, I’m just trying to-” Donnie starts, attempting to turn to face her, but that’s exactly when the left engine sputters to a stop and the world goes sideways. After that it’s just a lot of yelling and blurring vision, everything blending together as Donnie spins at a very inadvisable speed, until finally there’s a hard _crunch,_ and a second later a burning pain in his shoulder.

Finally, the world comes back into focus. He’s on the floor, April and Raph crouched over him, Mikey and Leo peering over their shoulders. It’s eerily familiar, but of what Donnie can’t recall right now.

“You coulda snapped your neck!” April yells. “Your- do you-? No, of course you have a neck. Jeez!”

“What’d Dad say about testing your junk, Donnie?” Raph scolds. Donnie scowls.

“It’s not junk!” he insists, and then, “ItsoooOOW!”

Pain flares in his shoulder. Mikey nudges Raph aside. “You’re bleeding, Dee,” he says, half upset and half fascinated, like any normal eight year old. Raph pulls him back, only for Leo to duck in.

“Oh, man, your gear is totally stuck in your neck,” he adds, much more fascinated than Mikey. “Grosseroni.”

“Get back, kids, April will handle this,” April announces, shoving all three of them aside to huddle by the counter while she rolls up her sleeves. “Don’t worry, we watched a YouTube thing on first aid at school last week. The teacher made us turn it off when she caught us but like, jokes on her, because fractions aren’t gonna help you now, huh?”

“Fractions always help me,” Donnie mumbles. He’s a little light-headed. April smiles at him.

“Course they do,” she coos. “You’re so good at math, Donnie, you little smarty genius-” She yanks the metal out of his shoulder. Okay, ‘yank’ is probably a strong word, seeing as the piece she holds up is half an inch long at most, but Donnie still yells some very bad words.

“You swore!” Mikey says, pointing. “Pops is gonna be _so_ mad at you, Dee!”

“Nobody’s telling your dad anything!” April replies. She has a hand clamped on Donnie’s shoulder and a glare leveled at Mikey. “Snitches get stitches, little man, and I really need this babysitting job, okay? Raph, come over here and hold his shoulder, okay? I’m gonna get the bandages. And take his gear off too, if you-”

“No!” Donnie interjects. He struggles to sit up, but Raph and Leo are both already there, keeping him in place. “It’s okay, I can fix it, don’t take it off!”

“Calm down, Donnie, it’s okay,” Raph says soothingly. He reaches over to snap off the clasps on Donnie’s other shoulder, and Donnie bites his wrist. “ _Youch!_ Seriously, dude!”

“Don’t touch it, I’ll fix it!” Donnie repeats. April runs back in with bandages and a frown.

“Does it hurt, Donnie?” she asks. Donnie hesitates before nodding. “Okay, the bandages will help, but I gotta get to your back to fix ‘em up, okay?”

“Don’t take it off,” he repeats, but it comes out more pleading than he meant. April chews her lip, Raph hovers, and Mikey is hiding behind his hands, but Leo looks him dead in the face.

“We got your back, bro,” he says, leaning forward to gently rap his knuckles on Donnie's plastron. “Don’t be scared, we got you.”

Donnie meets his eyes, then looks away, then looks back at him, then sighs. Slowly, he reaches up and hits the hidden switch that unlocks the clasps on his shell, and lets his gear fall to the floor, leaving him sitting with his soft shell exposed.

Instantly, Leo jumps to sit at his back, covering his left side, followed quickly by Mikey guarding his right. Raph settle behind them, facing Donnie while the others keep an eye outward.

“Thanks, Donnie,” Raph says, as April starts to bandage. April nods and gives Donnie a thumbs up as soon as she pins the bandage in place.

“Pizza floor party,” she announces, immediately echoed by Mikey repeating the phrase. She jumps up to grab everyone’s food from the bench, and Donnie feels himself relax, inch by inch, until almost all the tension is gone. Really, it’s kind of hard to tell he hasn’t got his shell on, when the weight of his brothers’ protectiveness is on him instead.

 

 

Yeah, it’s a predictable end. The loner learns to rely on his friends and embrace what makes him different. Or, if you want to go to inspirational route, the pitiable main character ‘overcomes’ his disability and manages to actually be happy, despite how obviously terrible he should feel about the whole thing. One is way more overtly insulting and eye-roll inducing than the other, so he'd much rather go with the former than the latter, but that’s the great thing about not being normal. He doesn’t actually have to follow what pop culture decides his life should be like. So his brothers look out for him, sure, but he looks out for them too, you know? It's just what brothers do.

 

 

“Guys, this punk is off the _chain!”_ Leo yells, ignoring the groans of his brothers. “And by that I mean he is literally out of the chains we tied him up with. Heads up!”

The villain of the week roars and flings out the actual metal chains he’d been held down by, along with the weirdly strong daisy chains that are growing out of his arms and whipping around at them all. Donnie dodges away from one of them and taps a command into his wrist console.

“How’s it coming, Michael!” he calls out. Halfway down the block, Mikey pokes his head out of the shattered window of a bodega and shrugs.

“Bupkis!” he calls. “What kind of a place sells Halloween candy in July but not weed killer?”

“Well, unless this guy’s allergic to candy corn, we’re toast!” Raph yells. He executes a perfect somersault dive and then slams head first into a dumpster. “I meant to do that!”

Leo cuts through a vine heading for Raph and does a rapid cha cha slide out of the way as another volley lunges at him. “We really oughta hurry up and _mow this guy down_ , huh? Huh?”

The plant man roars again, and a swarm of bees pour out of his mouth. Leo shrieks and drops to the ground as they zoom over his head.

“Mikey, your allergies! Stay inside!” Raph yells from behind the dumpster. He finally re-emerges with a busted TV held over his head. “How’s this for heads up?” And then he throws the TV, hitting the plant man square in the head.

Plant man goes down. Leo tentatively peaks his head up, then yelps and ducks as the bees come by again. Donnie’s spider legs bring him down to ground level and he hovers next to Raph as they both inspect the plant man.

“That was more violent than we usually do,” he notes.

“Leo cut someone in half,” Raph points out.

“He was on my head!” Leo protests into the sidewalk.

“Uh, guys?” Mikey calls from down the street.

The three of them look over to Mikey, pointing frantically, and when they look back, there are fast-growing plants blooming from the plant man’s legs, uncovered by the smashed TV. Donnie frowns and scans then.

“They seem to be-” he begins, but the plants suddenly explode outward, shooting along the street and up into the sky and cracking the road beneath their feet, all so suddenly that it’s just a blur of green and white. It slows after a few seconds, but when it does, they’re standing in what feels like a greenhouse. Plants cover every surface, with vines creeping along buildings and flowers blooming in pavement cracks, long grass on the road and moss in the sewer grates, and every single car on the street is now completely skewered by tall, thin, vibrant green bamboo shoots.

“Woah,” Raph breathes, but Donnie is a little preoccupied.

“Oh, no,” he says, right as his spider legs give an unhealthy _clunk_ and drop him into the grass that used to be the road. “Ow.”

“Donnie!” his brothers yell. He hauls himself upright, trying to untangle the uncooperating metal from around his legs. “You okay?” he hears Raph say.

“Fine, fine, just suddenly weighed down with about forty pounds of reinforced titanium alloy-” The shell gives another whir and the legs suddenly jump to life, waving wildly. His brothers spring back, Leo drawing his sword. “No, no, don’t hurt them, I’ll just - ugh. Here.”

Donnie pressed a hidden switch on his battle shell and the power dies, spider legs going limp again as the shell drops off his back completely, exposing his soft shell.

Not for long, though. Mikey, just now reaching them from the bodega, immediately plasters himself to Donnie’s back in a hug. “What happened, bro?” he asks, sounding upset. Donnie absently pats his head.

“One of the plants must have shot through an important component,” he says, poking at the battle shell. There’s two holes in the lower back, both sparking with exposed wires. “It’s about the same thickness as the bamboo that got the cars, too.”

“Like, they were going for technology?” Raph asks.

“Bingo,” Donnie says. “Like a Facebook cartoon of a zombie teenager on a cell phone.” He sighs and gathers the battle shell in his arms, pulling all the spider legs into one neat pile. “Thanks, Old Man Yells At Cloud, it’s not like I needed it or anything.”

“It’ll be fine,” Mikey says, hitching his leg up onto Donnie’s belt until he’s securely in prime piggyback position. Raph gathers up the battle shell and Leo posts up behind them with his sword resting casually on his shoulders. “We got your back, bro!”

“Obviously,” Donnie says, and he really means it.


End file.
